October 19, 2011

It's a WaPo-Pew poll, eliciting the first reaction to the names Herman Cain, Rick Perry, and Mitt Romney. For each man, there is one word that clearly comes out on top. Can you guess?

9-9-9, Texas, and Mormon, respectively. It's interesting that the first 5 words for Cain in rank order are positive. In fact, "interesting" is the 3d word. The first negative word, #6, is "inexperience/not experienced."

Perry does much worse in the mental reflex test. After Texas, we come to "no" and "idiot/idiotic."

The #1 word for Romney — "Mormon" — is also #1 by a wide margin. Is it strange that "black" for Cain is only #8 when "Mormon" is so clearly the first attribute assigned to Romney?

The NYT did an unusually positive piece on Romney's faith this week...

"“He told me that, as human beings, our work isn’t measured by taking the sum of our good deeds and the sum of our bad deeds and seeing how things even out,” recalled Mr. Clark, now 37, sober and working as a filmmaker in Utah. “He said, ‘The only thing you need to think about is: Are you trying to improve, are you trying to do better? And if you are, then you’re a saint.’ ”

Is not that all that God expects of us? To try?

Romney will lose the haters just as Obama couldn't carry racists, and in the end that won't any difference.

Cain has been making friends over a second career of motivational convention speaking.

He always gets a good response from people.

Mitt has always been a secret wrapped in an enigma. He changed positions like a weather vane; and therefore,no one knows what he really thinks.

So we are left with the Mormon personality type that Mitt wears as his outer uniform. Great hair.

It actually helped Mitt when people saw him get angry at Santorum and Perry last night ...anger is a real show of what's inside the mystery man who to date had demanded that we just trust his Mormon outer personality as a good thing.

Perry has worn out his hard nosed Texan with good manners schtic. It does not play well outside Texas.

But how will Romney overtake Cain?

The sudden push everywhere to see Gingrich as wise old Newt rather than a self serving grinch is the only hope Romney has to overtake Cain.

"Ted Oparowski, a retired firefighter, and his wife, Pat, a secretary, still praise Mr. Romney for ministering to their 14-year-old son, David, who was dying of cancer three decades ago."

"The boy, upon hearing that Mr. Romney was a lawyer, asked him to help draft a will, so that he might leave something to each of his friends. Mr. Romney pulled out a legal pad, and together they wrote one up. Later, he gave the eulogy at the boy’s funeral.

"If Mr. Romney, who no longer holds an official church title, seems overly polished or wooden on the campaign trail, his defenders say that is just how he is, reserved yet caring. “He’s always been that way, that’s his demeanor,” Mrs. Oparowski said."

I doubt that anyone responding to this poll missed the fact that Cain is black. The words most associated with Cain among "all adults" and "rep leaners" is 999 and businessman. The people who responded to this poll know Cain's marketing. Also, they're interested, another word pretty far up the list for Cain. It's great is that the word "black" is so far down the list, #8 among all adults and #11 among rep leaners. He's not the black candidate, he's the interesting businessman candidate whereas poor Romney and Perry are still stuck in their Texas and Mormon boxes. Clearly, Cain has the better marketing campaign.

The media has done a fine job of marginalizing Romney because of his religion while at the same time proclaiming the need for tolerance. The m.o. is to state that Romney is a Mormon, that evangelical Christians are bigots, and then reference some strange dogma of the Mormon religion. It's a tar brush applied with a delicate stroke.....I'm still curious as to what the Rev. Wright's thoughts are on gay marriage, illegal immigration, and the theology of Elijah Muhammed.

Recall that what you quoted was Mr. Clark's three sentence summary of a very long conversation. Clark remembers that part of the conversation because, evidently, his errors and misdeeds weighed so heavily on his mind that he despaired he could ever do enough to be saved. Romney taught him we cannot earn our way into heaven. This simple truth freed Clark of his heavy burden and gave him the strength to accept Christ's offer of forgiveness. I'm confident Romney shared other things with Clark that night. Clark focuses on this part of the conversation because it helped quench his parched soul.

I read that NY Times article and also found it unusually complimentary, considering it was the NY Times.

The general description of Romney's personal life with his work as LDS leader, counselor to others in times of trouble, and active charity work was of many laudable years by Romney.

A lot of time spent with people with drug problems, multiple meetings with everyday people with medical problems, interfaith services, building a new meeting house, out doing volunteer work like painting and weeding a common church veggie garden.

William, right you are! Any way to work the word "Mormon" into the convo, the hacks will take it. Romney had a great comeback last night when he said, in response to the Perry pastor issue, that he'd heard worse. No doubt. Interesting that even as a frontrunner, highly qualified, experienced, intelligent, loaded with campaign cash, and he's still most associated with the word "Mormon." It's reminiscent of the anti-Catholic hacks during the Kennedy election.

Herman is not seen as a black man because Herman relates so easily with white folks. Herman does not send out signals that say this man is dangerous, which is the historical racial division source.

Whites who have abused blacks or consented to their abuse are afraid of a black man seeking revenge.

The Jessie Jackson race hustler types use that division and demand danegelt payments. But Herman has none of that signal in his soul.

It is weird how the MSM, starting with the News week cover, all attaching Cain photos with deliberate backlighting problems to make Herman's loving facial expressions disappear into a mask of a blacked out face.

The psyops guys in the Media are signalling to whites that they should fear this strange black man.

But it is too late to get him with that. Not after he has spoken so well.

This simple truth freed Clark of his heavy burden and gave him the strength to accept Christ's offer of forgiveness. I'm confident Romney shared other things with Clark that night. Clark focuses on this part of the conversation because it helped quench his parched soul.

The only thing God expects is for us to keep trying.

And I would add what Mitt surely told him: as long as you don't bail on Christ, and keep trying to be better, he will cover your sins through his sacrifice and atonement.

Or as the book of Mormon scripture says, "For the natural man is an enemy to God, and has been from the fall of Adam, and will be, forever and ever, unless he yields to the enticings of the Holy Spirit, and putteth off the natural man and becometh a saint through the atonement of Christ the Lord, and becometh as a child, submissive, meek, humble, patient, full of love, willing to submit to all things which the Lord seeth fit to inflict upon him, even as a child doth submit to his father.

That about sums it up. I was afraid of eternal damnation for a long time, if I completely turned my back on the church, even though I thought it was preaching a bunch of BS, and my beliefs, even though they weren't MY beliefs.

Then one day, I realized that I'd been brainwashed at an impressionable age, and this fear that had been instilled in me was a complete and total mind-f*ck.

Someone who is a multimillion-dollar donor and an active and elite member of an exlusive, secretive religion that ostracizes others, including non-LDS children in the neighborhood, has made a choice. That choice may serve him. But it's legitimate to use that fact as part of one's assessment of him.

Mormons will undoubtedly favor Romney because of his religion. It is no different if some of us are not so excited about it.

I'm not surprised by the "Mormon" result. Mormonism is the only thing that distinguishes Romney from everyone's generic, prototypical idea of a politician. How many times have we seen Mitt Romney in Hollywood blockbusters? Like when those terrorists hi-jacked Air Force One in the 90's? Or when he was the mayor of Gotham City? Or when aliens invaded earth and Romney had to fly a fighter jet to fend them off while Will Smith smuggled a nuke onto their mother ship?

He's so generic! And so boring. He became Mormon just to be interesting. Zzzzzzz.

If Amerikans had any sense, they'd realize that "mathematician" is a good word to describe Cain and something that sets him apart from all the touchy-feely, humanities and liberal arts, and lawyer types that pollute our political scene.

Of course, Ron Paul, being a physician, is also more than a breath of fresh air.

Is it broken down by "likely voters" for GOP and Democrats? I would be very interested to see what rank "black" came in for the respective self-labeled party loyalists. Woe unto the Democrats if it's higher than the GOP. Of course, that will be nuanced, even if it was number one, as something like "well, the GOP is so inherently racist and so vacuous in talent that the ONLY story is that they are putting up a black guy" or some such drivel.

All three are false fronts. I don't think it's any mystery why potential Republican voters (we don't know yet since no primary votes have been cast yet) most likely will not vote in significant numbers for Michele Bachmann. Simple really. She's conservative to the core. She'll do what she says she'll do. She's not faking it like Romney, Perry and Cain are. And that scares Americans to death. It's maddening but has to be accepted that Americans - to quote John Lukacs - are split minded. They don't really want a true believer. In anything.

Are you really saying that GOP voters won't vote for Bachmann because she is conservative to the core? How about they won't vote for her because they don't much like her political abilities - or lack thereof? She also doesn't seem to be the brightest of the bunch either.

No matter how bona fide someone's credentials are they have to sell it to the voters and appear to have the ability to carry through.

Are you really saying that GOP voters won't vote for Bachmann because she is conservative to the core?

Yes. What I was trying to say in my post is that Americans in general, not only GOP voters, have a very hard time with someone who is definitely no holds barred ANYTHING. Bachmann may not be selling herself effectively but what she's selling is what she is: a pure unadulturated conservative. That scares the bejeezus out of most voters. Believe it or not they are comforted by the fact that Perry won't police the border and Romney won't crusade to end Obamacare and Cain won't challenge the Fed. They don't want pure conservatism or pure anything.

If Herman needs a foreign policy, then he can just spend a few days at the North Avenue headquarters and listen at the feet of Coca-Cola's marketers taken from the educated indigenous populations of every country in the world.

In an abstract sense you may be right about a no-holds barred politician scaring people. For instance dictators scare people too. I don't know if anyone is ever really no hold's barred anything since many people fluctate on various issues. And even the issues themselves sort of come and go. A conservative from 1990 is not the same as a conservative today.

Plus, if a politician doesn't seem willing to work with others that signals to a good many voters that the politician is too rigid and not worthy of serving since the founding fathers themselves were willing to compromise when the chips were down. The best politicians [usually] are those who can reach across the aisle.

Absolutely right. Let me add that a no-holds barred approach in politics is a simplistic approach. Obama said a lot of things that excited the liberal left but following through has been tough - and not realistic.

Similarly Bachmann and Paul can crow all they want about changing the system. If either of them happened to become President they would meet significant resistance from everyone in Washington. And don't get me started with Cain's 999 plan - pure fiction.

I think that the biggest "tell" that Romney let slip was when he answered Perry's rather rude question was:

"I'm running for office!" I can't be seen hiring illegals to do my yard work!!

A tiny glimpse beneath the polished and otherwise-impressive fellow who up to then I considered the best dude for pounding Obama into the ground.

I'm sure the Democrats will pick up on that un-Freudian slip as well. Appearances are what count. After all, that's what got the numb-nut now ruining the country elected POTUS in 2008.

I wasn't impressed at all with Cain's stumbling and bumbling explanations of how he "mis-spoke." But if Art Laffer and Paul Ryan are in favor of 9-9-9, I'm giving it a closer look.

Perry led with his jaw, ancient fossil Newt did well with the two "b's," bicker & broke, & Michelle still isn't that bad on the eyeballs, plus she was a tax attorney for a while and she sure out shown Sarah Palin who demonstrated mediocrity in the Fox after-debate analysis.

Santorum is too sententious and Newt is impressive, but lacks judgment, all brain & little ethics. Huntsman is out of the race, thank God, so we don't have to listen to RINO yammer, which Romney will supply in plentiful supply.

Maybe it's my atheism, but I never even think of "Mormon" when I think of Romney.

What does come immediately to mind is "Obama lite," meaning that if he was elected I think he would not make any sort of strong effort to get the deficit down, or to repeal even the most egregious parts of Obamacare. He would have been okay in 2008, but there's a lot of repair work for the next president to do and I just can't see Romney doing the fixing.

I've said before that Romney, like Huntsman, is the preferred choice of people who have no intention of voting Republican. I think that the MSM sees the handwriting on the wall and knows that Obama is about to be rejected in a landslide, and they think that Romney will be acceptable to them. But what's acceptable to them is not in any way, shape, or form going to be acceptable to me.

It'd be fun to give some views, Trad, but listening to a guy who offers his own horrendous version of "God Bless America", a guy who thinks that running a less than mediocre (in terms of quality) retail pizza business is the highest aspiration in America, and have him doing that on the reality TV show setting that is these Republican debates...

Well, that's just the priceless pinnacle of surreal spectacle.

"Imagine there's no pizza... it isn't hard to do...". Lol.

Sorry man, but this is how the cycle renews itself. I wish (for your sake) that I could say this sort of a jokey display bodes well for your side, but I fear not.

wv: ashogin. LOL. WWPS (What would Palladian say?)

Also, I'm not sure if I should pronounce that ass hoggin' (as in stingy with my anal sex partners) or ass hogan (as in something insulting having to do with the American POW from TV Land in Germany).